Mojo Bag #1 Hand

© Betye Saar, Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California; Photo by Robert Wedemeyer
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Mojo Bag #1 Hand

1970
Sculpture
Mixed media assemblage
62 × 17 × 2 in. (157.48 × 43.18 × 5.08 cm)
Purchased with funds provided by Alice and Nahum Lainer, the Modern Art Acquisition Fund, the Modern and Contemporary Art Council, the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund in honor of Betye Saar and Steve Tisch, Francis H. Williams and Keris A. Salmon, H. Allen Evans and Anna Rosicka, and Kim and Keith Allen-Niesen (M.2019.286)
Modern Art
Currently on public view:
Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Since gallery displays may change often, please contact us before you visit to make certain this item is on view.

Label

Betye Saar’s Mojo Bag #1 Hand is among the pioneering Black artist’s earliest assemblage works based on non-Eurocentric sources....
Betye Saar’s Mojo Bag #1 Hand is among the pioneering Black artist’s earliest assemblage works based on non-Eurocentric sources. The cowhide bag is informed by Native American leather pouches, typically sewn by women, which would include small inner pockets guarding an amulet or talisman (here referred to using the African-American term “mojo”); the hidden interior pouch of Saar’s assemblage holds a bone. Mojo Bag’s fringes are macramé, a knotting technique often used in the 1970s by women artists to inspire conversations about the value of so-called women’s work and to critique the traditional hierarchy of art over craft.

The hand of the title refers to the hamsa, a palm- shaped amulet popular throughout the Middle East and North Africa considered a defense against the evil eye. Saar often includes the silhouette of her own hand in her work as a symbol of fate or fortune.

Wall label, 2021.
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